RANI NAIR
Foto Imre Zsibrik
Foto Imre Zsibrik
Foto Imre Zsibrik
I work as a dancer and choreographer with a special interest in decolonial practices and postcolonial aesthetics.
My choreographies have been programmed at the Centre National de la Dance Paris, ImpulsTanz Vienna, Spielart festival Munich, Ignite! Festival of contemporary dance Delhi, Singapore International Festival of Arts, Gothenburg Dance- and Theatre festival and at the Swedish biennial for performing arts. My work is also represented at the Performing arts museum, Dance museum in Stockholm and in the book Oxford Dictionary of Dance and Re-enactment.
Memory and archive is a recurring thematic in my work, firstly through a reconstruction of my inheritance of Kurt Jooss last choreography, Dixit Dominus, created for the Swedish based Indian dancer Lilavati, and later on as a second order performance, a performance about the performance, Future Memory. I also participated in the curation of Ong Keng Sen in the Archive box an exchange between Japanese dance makers and artists of the Indian contemporary dance scene. This summer I’m performing the duo An evening with Astad in Munich in a programmation discussing “post-migrant dance”. The work stages Astad Deboo 70 years old, a pioneer of Indian contemporary dance and takes a closer look at his early avantgard solos from 1970-80s.
I’ve collaborated in various settings and networks, such as the self organised Sweet and Tender collaborations and was a founding member of Rörelsen – koreografer i Skåne Together with Jassem Hindi (France) and Mia Habib (Norway), I performed as the trio WE Insist in varied settings from apartments in Morocco, galleries in Damascus and abandoned houses in Vardö, northern Norway. I’m currently a member of the art group Ful, a collective of artists from different fields working with queer feminist theories and postcolonial aesthetics. Ful art magazine was awarded best cultural journal 2010. At the election 2014 we created the anti-nationalistic cabaret Europa Europa, with the electronica duo The Knife. We toured Sweden 2014, Europe 2015 and collaborated with local artists in Mexico and North America 2016. During the election last autumn we created Mother’s Manifest which toured in a blow up tent to various places in Sweden.
As a dancer I’ve worked with Shobana Jeyasingh Dance co, Jayachandran Palazhy, Julie Nioche and made projects and workshops in Madagascar, India, Mongolia, Syria, Turkey, South Africa. Influenced by the South Asian Underground club scene, I created my first experimental solos at The Place Theatre London to music composed by the late State of Bengal.
Grants & Awards
Foto Imre Zsibrik
Positions of trust
Papers on my work
Foto Imre Zsibrik
Trailers of previous performances and collaborations
Dixit dominus by Kurt Jooss from Rani Nair on Vimeo.
Me me me me from Rani Nair on Vimeo.